Lorenzo Lotto

Venus and Cupid

1540

Oil on canvas, 92, 4 x 11, 4 cm

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Of the countless Renaissance paintings of Venus and Cupid, few are as beautiful – and certainly none is quite so startling – as this humorous wedding picture. It is an allegory in which the goddess of love, surrounded by symbols of fertility and conjugal fidelity, blesses a marriage. With her right hand Venus raises a myrtle wreath through which Cupid urinates, with evident delight, onto her lap. His action may seem ludicrous to us today, but for Lotto ‘s contemporaries a urinating child was an augury of good fortune. It has been suggested that the picture was painted in 1540 for Lotto ‘s cousin, but an earlier date is also possible